Excerpt - Chapter One

"We celebrate Dwyn's Day as a testament to true love and sacrifice. It's a remembrance of the way things were and the way they've come to be. In the end, let it be a reminder that every one of us has the power to change the course of events through love."—Dillon Cooper, New Gods and Monsters, Twenty years After Dwyn

The gray clouds scudded by overhead, blowing in quickly from the east.

Dwyn shivered and pulled on his woolen cap. It was cold out, unusual for so early in the fall. The rains had been heavy this season, the wettest in a generation, and Circle Lake was close to overflowing its banks. If he stretched to look over the rows of corn plants, he could see the waters lapping at the shore far below, as if hungry to consume his village of Manicouga.

His father had consulted the elders, some of whom had seen more than fifty summers, and everyone agreed things were changing. Whether that augured good or ill was anyone's guess.

He shrugged and moved along the row of plants, breaking off ears of corn and throwing them into the jute sack that hung from his shoulder.

Ahead of him, two of his age-mates, Declan and Baia, were working their way down the next two rows.

Dwyn frowned. He got distracted easily, and he'd let the two of them get a jump on him. That wouldn't do.

He redoubled his pace. He moved with focus and purpose, and soon he was closing the gap with his friends.

"Someone's being chased by a lion," Baia said with a laugh.

"Or a tiger." Declan grinned, his nice smile only missing one tooth, lost to a fight with one of the Beckham brothers the year before.

Dwyn grinned. "Or a bear?" Dwyn only knew lions and tigers from the fairy tale his mother used to tell them, "The Girl and the Aus." He had no idea what an Aus was, either.

Bears he knew. The hunters occasionally brought one home, and old Alesser had a five-line scar across his wrinkled face that he claimed came from one of the beasts.

A shout went up from ahead of them. Dwyn craned his neck to see what the ruckus was, but he couldn't make out anything. "What's going on?"

Declan, who was half a head taller, looked toward the commotion. "Hard to tell. Something down by the road."

Dwyn laid down his sack carefully and ran up the hill to one of the old elms that dotted the field. He climbed into the tree, scurrying up through the leaves and branches until he had a clear view of the Old Road. It ran from up north to somewhere down south, maybe near the ruins of old Quebec if the merchant tales held any truth. Hardly anyone from Manicouga ever followed it, but occasionally traders would follow it to town, bringing exotic wares and news from the other villages that were scattered up and down its length.

They swore it went all the way down to the Heat, the great desert that had consumed much of the world after the Reckoning.

"What's going on down there?" Baia called from below.

Dwyn tried to make sense of it. "There are three wagons coming down the pass. They're loaded up with all sorts of things. They don't look like traders though."